(8) is an epistolary story involving a supposed government agency sniffing out extraterrestrials and a supposed solid citizen who is helping them out; whatever shred of cleverness it displays is smothered by excessive length and archness of tone and gimmick.
There are two contenders for Prize Bummer in these issues. John Ashcroft, who had ten stories and a guest editorial in Carnell’s magazines and their nearest competitors, Nebula and Authentic Science Fiction, appears with his first story, “Dawn of Peace Eternal” in 8. This is an overwritten variant on “and then I woke up”—our hero is a captive of the terrible alien Thruna, but at the end we learn he’s really in a mental institution, and it’s just been mostly destroyed in a nuclear war. W. P. Cockcroft, a veteran of Wonder Stories, Tales of Wonder, and the 1939 fanzine version of New Worlds, contributes his last story, “Last Man on Mars” (9): an explosion kills everyone but the astronomer protagonist, who sits in his observatory drinking whiskey and listening to classical music and getting crazier with isolation, until a spaceship from Earth crashlands and the one surviving crewman lasts just long enough to tell him that war has started up on Earth again and that’s it for space travel and our hero’s prospects. It’s just as bleak as Ashcroft’s, but less noisy.
§
The Guest Editorials continue, and now they are beginning to display a bit more substance than before. John Wyndham is the Guest in 7 with “The Pattern of Science Fiction.” The blurb notes that Wyndham is “yet another member of the International Fantasy Award panel,” and I wonder if this is a talk he gave at an IFA function. He starts by mourning the low repute of the field and its name, though it’s hard to tell whether his complaint is more about perceptions of the field or the reality of large amounts of bad material. But some are keeping the faith. Which is?
Well, primarily, perhaps, that [stories] keep the rules... One of them is that a tale must proceed from its premise with adequate reason and logic... [I]n the imaginative story there must be a wholeness and a logic which is not cut across either by silly assumptions used simply to make a situation more exciting, or by silly inventions called up on the spur of the moment just to get the characters out of a jam. The unities of likelihood must be preserved to the best of the writer’s ability.
Now there is a nice line that articulates a point of SF aesthetics as succinctly as I’ve ever seen. Another nice passage, though debatable: “Then there is the science itself. It has to be there. It is the backbone. Backbones, however, are worn inside, not outside.” Returning to the former theme:
Invention, then, cannot afford to lunge out wildly. If it goes far beyond the known, or at least the suspected principles of its age, the reader no longer has common ground with the writer... There is plenty of this kind of thing where the author has got himself into such a state of utter confusion that he falls back on aggressively tough remarks of great stupidity leading to a series of pointless fights to keep things going, and, unfortunately, it is this kind of thing also that has now come to be commonly thought of as the pattern of science-fiction.
The object, then, of an annual Fantasy Award is to pick out the best exercises of controlled imagination—imagination working from data or theory within accepted limitations—work in which the writer has thought honestly, written carefully, and refused to abuse the logical implications of his theme.
Up next, in 8, is Wilson Tucker’s “Science into Fantasy,” which points out that yesterday’s apparent science in SF (about Mars and Venus, e.g.) is today’s fantasy, and so are some of the assumptions in contemporary SF, like the physical ease of space travel. (“The daily visit to the water closet is another ingenious booby-trap.”)
The Guest in 9 is J. T. McIntosh, whose “Something New Wanted...” is considerably more incisive than his stories of the time. “My experience of science fiction is that you, readers and editors of science fiction and fantasy magazines, are not really very keen on anything new, no matter what you say.” So how do we get new ideas? “...[S]omeone puts them in a story which does not go very far, but which is at least published somewhere. It comes in last or second-last in the magazine’s reader-rating, if any... Someone else sees the story and decides that it’s a good story gone wrong, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be used again the right way this time.” I.e., more conventionally. And so on. “You get what you deserve—but more than that, you get what you want. That’s why there are so few new ideas in science fiction.” McIntosh includes himself in this discussion, asking “is there anything new about these?” of a list that includes his One in Three Hundred. He does claim to have had a new idea once, but he won’t say what it is—he hasn’t been able to sell it, but still hopes to figure out how someday.
§
In other developments or non-developments, outside advertising continues at a low level. Most of the ads are house ads, which are growing: there are two-page spreads for Nova bookplates and big splashes for the Nova Science Fiction Novels, which fell flat despite big plans. (Five of them—including James Blish’s Jack of Eagles, Theodore Sturgeon’s The Dreaming Jewels, and A.E. van Vogt’s The Weapon Shops of Isher—made it into print.)
There is an ad in 7 for The Globe Tavern. It appears that proprietor Lew Mordecai, for whatever reason, left the White Horse for the Globe, so: “Habitués of the White Horse agree that sentiment goes deeper than panelled walls and, together with Mr. Mordecai,” have shifted the London Circle meetings to the Globe. A full page is devoted to this! Either that’s dedication, or the ad was free, or advertising space was really cheap in Science Fantasy. There’s also an ad for a “Fantasy Secretary”—apparently not a double entendre in that innocent age—who “will type, correct, and lay-out your Science Fiction story, technical article, etc., ready for you to submit to British and American professional markets.” And, most promisingly, half the back cover of 8 is an ad for the Royal Air Force Flying Review. New revenue frontier? No; this ad did not recur.
16. See these covers at http://www.sfcovers.net/mainnav.htm or http://www.philsp.com/mags/sciencefantasy.html.
1717. Pseudonym of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore.
4: SCIENCE FANTASY, VOLUME 4 (ISSUES 10-12)
Volume 4 (issues for September and December 1954 and February 1955) starts with two innovations: One is a new cover artist, Partridge, who quickly flew the coop. That’s no great loss. 10’s cover looks stiff and cluttered and the use of color is unimaginative compared to the usual Quinn.18 The other change is a story title and author on the cover. Since 3, the first Carnell issue, there had been no lettering on the cover other than title, issue designation, and price. There is a new printer, F.A.H. & Son of London being replaced starting with 11 by Rugby Advertiser of, you guessed it, Rugby.
§
Mike Ashley said in his Tymn/Ashley essay: “I don’t think there’s a bad issue from about 10 onwards.” Certainly in these issues the magazine definitely turns a corner. Though there is still material that is inane or trivial or both, overall the quality and the originality of the fiction is significantly improved and the magazine as a whole begins to read like something other than a collection of everybody else’s rejects.
The lead novelette honored on the cover of 10 is J. T. McIntosh’s “Five into Four,” and McIntosh’s thinking continues to rub me the wrong way.19 There’s a matter transmission accident, and five people set out from Mars to Earth but only four arrive. The negligent technician is brought up on homicide charges. But wait! The four lucky survivors all realize that they are subtly...changed. So the fifth traveler wasn’t lost. He was merely redistributed into the other four.
